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Friday, 2 August 2013

A Very Special Friday with Molly of The Marketing Salon

You have already met Molly and maybe even won a copy of her book in my last giveaway. Molly is a walking social media encyclopaedia and whenever I have a question, she is kind enough to answer it. She helped me a lot with getting more readers for this blog and her advice is always helpful. Actually, one of the items on Molly's to-do-list is "fix Olga's blog" (which I did, I think, but then I am affraid means moving to Wordpress which I have in mind but no time for). But you must admit that it's better now, isn't it? As for reward, I pay Molly handsomly in cookies, cake and homemade hot chocolate.

Social media for bloggers

With around 200 million blogs in existence, bloggers carry a
lot of weight in the online world. Consumers say bloggers influence purchasing
decisions more than Facebook and Twitter. You can’t influence those decisions
or be a part of the conversation unless people know that your blog exists. And
social media is a great way to expand your influence, increase your traffic and
improve your relationship with your readers.

Have Dedicated Pages
For Your Blog

While you can promote your content via your personal
channels, you should create pages for your blog specifically. First, you want
to make it as easy for people to follow you as possible and you don’t want to
have to friend everyone on Facebook or adjust security settings to do so.
Secondly, people who follow your blog may not care about your vacation photos
or what you’re eating for dinner. They are likely to stop following if they are
inundated with content they aren’t interested in.

Using Auto-Updating
Features

In order to populate those channels, you need to share your
blog’s content. Few people have the time or energy to do that by hand and
fortunately, most social media sites offer a solution. Most blogging software
applications allow you to automatically share your posts on your social media
channels. You can find these options on the settings or by searching online for
help.

You can dictate what text goes along with the updates,
whether or not images are shown, etc. Play around with the settings until you
find something you like. Make sure that you aren’t also connecting your social
media sites together as well, or you’ll end up with your blog updating Facebook
and Twitter and Twitter also updating Facebook and creating double posts.

RSS Feeds

Many people use aggregators to read online content. These
are sites like Google Reader and Feedly which bring content from different
sites all to one site. Some bloggers don’t like RSS feeds because it drives
traffic away from your site. They assume that without an RSS feed, readers will
be forced to come directly to their site. However, it’s more likely, that they
will simply lose those readers.

If you blog in different languages, create an RSS feed for
both. This can also be useful if you blog about different topics. If you post
your recipes as well as offering parenting advice, you can allow people to
subscribe to just your food posts, just your parenting posts, or both.

Social Media Buttons

And how will your current readers find your social media
pages? Get some social media icons for your site and post them in a prominent
locations (the upper right hand corner is a common location.) There are
thousands of icon sets out there to match any design aesthetic. (Here’s a start.)

Test your links and be sure to have them open in a different
tab when they are clicked on. You don’t want to direct people away from the
blog itself. And make sure you link to your RSS feed.

Sharebars

Encouraging others to share your content on social media is
an easy way to spread the word about your blog. The easier you make it for
people to share your content, the more likely they are to do so.

There are plenty of sharebar plugins for Wordpress and
Blogger or you can create your own using your own icons. Don’t overcrowd the
space with too many icons, however. Focus on the sites which your readers are
active on.